Learn a new thing every day: You may only multi-quote 3 posts on advrider. This thread just keeps on giving!

Να καμαρώνουμε μπορεί, σαν Αβραμόπουλοι αποκλείεται...

Truth be told this trip was a "last resort" plan, so that I get to go at least one long(ish) trip this summer... It turned out to be better than expected and I now sleep better at nights knowing that I can take another Friday and Monday off and do something similar...

We reached Kaiafas, the chosen destination for our camp, and Ghallas tried some friends on the phone to learn where the "new" spot was (the previous had burned at the 2007 fires. He took a right towards the shore which came to a dead end a couple of meters ahead. The track then went steeply uphill towards the rail tracks, which he said we were supposed to cross. It seemed impossible as there was very soft sand on the ground...

I volunteered to go ahead and see if it was feasible, trying to be the "brave" among us. Less than 4 meters into the try my front wheel buried in the sand and I fell with zero speed to my left. OK, don't panic, just pick the bike up. The way I had set up my luggage I had no reach at the rear left handle so only the bars were available, I have done that before on the previous africa twin and it had been relatively easy for me but this time the bike was resting a bit downhill so embarrassingly I asked Ghallas to come to the rescue (initially I had told not to bother get off his bike)... He was having other problems as the sand was too soft to hold the side stand and he was looking for something to wedge underneath it, with little success.

Meanwhile Kleopatra was spilling petrol from the cap breathers (both the transalp and the africa have that bug, and it's very dangerous if you ask me) and I was getting a bit worried... I tried once again from the bars and managed only to make them off-centre (another bug, if you put too much force the bars shift to the sides). Finally Ghallas came and we put her straight, carefully we turned the bikes and got back on the main road. The bars were now pointing to the right to go straight .. With all the excitement I got no photos of the whole ordeal.

He called his friend back and asked for more directions, turns out we were supposed to turn right further down the road, We found it and a while later we reached the camp spot and setup the tent.

Ghallas looked at the sky and wisely chose the spot that would keep the sun away from our tent in the morning.(make note of that)

We pitched the tent and went by bike a few km back the same road to a small restaurant where we ate dinner and had some beers (I also straightened the bars). We rode back to the tent.

We decided to have a night swim as the weather was warm and we had been sweating all day on the bikes. The beach was some 200m away, after the trees ended there were some small dunes before reaching the shore. As we were exiting the trees, Ghallas noticed that we could have problems coming back at the right spot and put two 1 meter sticks standing on the sand, they were barely visible 5m away.. I thought I'd play it smart by marking our spot on the trees' skyline. Entering the dunes we both felt that we would find our way back easily.

We had a great cooling swim by the stars (a bit wavy I should say, Kaiafas is a famous windsurf beach) and started to walk back towards the camp. Distracted by our conversation we realised that we were a bit off course since we went through a small area filled with garbage that we hadn't when going. We entered the trees by a different spot but we thought the tent would be near-by. It wasn't. We started to walk left and right at where we estimated would be the right spot but nothing looked familiar. I was not totally panicked since I believed that if we went all the way to the main road and then walked back the way we had come we would find the bikes but it would take a lot of time.

In a rare (for him) flash of intelligence, Ghallas mentioned that I had my bike keys with me, which happen to have my alarm remote, which could set off the alarm to guide us. I looked at the screen and saw I had two bars (out of three) meaning first that we were close, second that I could communicate with the bike. I pressed the panic button and from far away behind us we heard the siren. We had been completely lost and had been looking at a totally wrong place. I had to set it on once again to make sure we were going the right way, and again we had missed by some degrees. There were houses not far away so we didn't want use the siren again so we turned off our forehead lights and I turned on the indicators. We had passed 10 meters from the bikes and were already going the other way! I kept turning the lights on and finally we got to the tent. I believe that had we not had the remote we would still be there looking for the camp, it is amazing how helplessly lost one can get under these conditions.

We relaxed a bit at the total calmness of our surroundings and got in the tent to get some sleep.

a. you weren't trying to be the "brave" among us, you just, again, failed not to be "the fool" among us.

b. my "rare" flash of intelligence was just the continuation of my very early intuition that we were going far to the right ever since you managed to surface your arse out of the water. I should have left you take the bus back to Athens, buy a new bike and follow the entire day's trip to get back to where we parked.

Oh, I forget. You didn't have your GPS with you, so you wouldn't be able to find Kaiafas if they served it to you for breakfast.

a. you weren't trying to be the "brave" among us, you just, again, failed not to be "the fool" among us.

b. my "rare" flash of intelligence was just the continuation of my very early intuition that we were going far to the right ever since you managed to surface your arse out of the water. I should have left you take the bus back to Athens, buy a new bike and follow the entire day's trip to get back to where we parked.

Oh, I forget. You didn't have your GPS with you, so you wouldn't be able to find Kaiafas if they served it to you for breakfast.

You're wrong, tserts, that road actually looks really steep in that photo.
Great Ride Report mate. Truly excellent photos - thanks for showing us around a beautiful part of the world. The food looks excellent as well.

__________________Team ADV member - 2014 Australasian Safari, on an XR600R.
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